Trigger Warning-some might find the images distressful, and my apologies if this is so

A Language Lit by Fire

Did you know that fire has several different voices and that it speaks with its own language? That it can whisper low and soft, all full of warmth and innocence, when tamed in the grate of a cottage fire grate…That it hisses with a vengeful glee when allowed to breath and that it can cackle with malevolence when given more to eat? No wonder it was a source of worship for the ancestors, and why the Gods punished Prometheus for stealing it from them

The Grenfell towers was a tower of babel, a monument to a multiculturalism that came about through few options, poverty, of making friendships, relationships, education, raising families. The towers stand as shells of dreams, amidst the city of the human deluge, and now exist as if in a time capsule.

Yet all the data in the world cannot recapture the life, the loves, the hopes, the disappointments, the thousand and one days and nights that went on behind closed doors. The angry gestures, the romantic words, the erotic fumbling’s after a Friday/Saturday night…the halo of light around the fried chicken shop, that said tonight was over

Bonfire of austerity-Spent and burnt out

Exactly How Does the Human Body Burn?

The sages would have us know that “the thin outer layers of skin fry and begin to peel off as the flames dance across their surface. Then, after around 5 minutes, the thicker dermal layer of skin shrinks and begins to split, allowing the underlying yellow fat to leak out”.

The researchers say, like the scalds of old with hoarded knowledge, “that the average body can, a little like a tree branch and up burn to around seven hours?” For men and women the average body consists of between 55-65% of water and that the average body fat will be between 24-31%

In a time when capitalism has lifted all those leaky poverty stricken boats, don’t believe that a tower block full of “all of human life is here” can’t take less than 15 minutes to catch fire and over 60 hours to burn out.

If the ancient Greeks had seen the Grenfell tower, would they think it one of the Palaces of Hades, seeing as it is slap next to the opulent palaces of the super rich. The outside cladding is as black as his heart and the natures of the wealthy; he would have appreciated their cold-blooded arrogance, because you are all equal when you are dead.

What does a bowl of smoke taste like, what it is to burn? What’s the smell of burning human flesh?

Slate magazine noted in 2007, “ Police in Houston reported, “The remains of a woman who had been strangled by her ex-boyfriend may have been burned over a barbecue on his balcony. * Neighbour’s said they noticed an awful, acrid odour coming from the grills for two days. You’ll know it when you smell it. Burning muscle tissue gives off an aroma similar to beef in a frying pan, and body fat smells like a side of fatty pork on the grill. But you probably won’t mistake the scent of human remains for a cookout.

That’s because a whole body includes all sorts of parts that we’d rarely use for a regular barbecue. For example, cattle are bled after slaughter, and the beef and pork we eat contain few blood vessels. When a whole human body burns, all the iron-rich blood still inside can give the smell a coppery, metallic component.

Full bodies also include internal organs, which rarely burn completely because of their high fluid content; they smell like burnt liver. Fire fighters say that cerebrospinal fluid burns up in a musky, sweet perfume.

Nonetheless in June, as part of a long hot summer, they hardly expected their bodies and souls would be fuel for the ‘bonfire of the red tape and regulations’ vanities. Is it still ‘corporate murder’, if you’ve been to all the right schools, clubs and sit on the right charity boards? And smoke? Don’t you know it is bad for you? That “smoke gets in your eyes”, and mouth, lungs, ears, hair, especially when your trying to escape with your kids from a burning building…”burning down the house… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNnAvTTaJjM

To the Soul?

For the ancient Athenians, it was customary to place the ashes of the deceased beloved one in an urn. They had a horror of an unmarked death, with none of the proper rites and rituals being observed. Hence the humbling of King Priam, during the Trojan War, where he begs Achilles, the noble psychotic for the return of his son Hectors, body.

For the multitude within those walls, the ghosts that have no fingers to tear through the veil that keeps them from the world there will be no preparation of the the body, that gets washed and anointed. No payment for the ferryman of the dead to convey the soul from the world of the living to the world of the dead.

As far as the state was concerned, many of those who died in a blaze of fear, agony, curdled and crisped, were already ghosts, not meant to be here, until caught.

The modern age, the lack of status for those consumed, means that those who have the task of finding them, have to go as Yevgeny Yevtushenko, said in his poem ‘Loss’, “like an old blind woman madly stretching her hand in fog, searching with hopeless incantation for her lost milk cow”

And “Fires were started” or Götterdämmerung

What it is to burn? What it is, to find a home, transformed into a portal to hell? What it is to feel the body being consumed by the devil, to have his hands so tight round your throat that you cannot scream for pities sake or your own? There are 200 pain receptors for every centimetre of the body. What it is to smell your bowels opening, hear the shriek of the flames as they claim you as one of their own?

In Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelung” Brünnhilde issues orders for a huge funeral pyre to be assembled by the river. Lighting the pyre with a firebrand, she sends Wotan’s ravens home. The fire flares up, and the hall of the Gibichungs catches fire and collapses, a red glow is seen in the sky. Flames flare up in the Hall of the Gods, hiding it and them from sight completely. And the gods are consumed in the flames.

I hope the residents of Grenfell would have understood Yevgeny Yevtushenko, when he wrote, “Is it true that we no longer exist? Or are we not yet born? We are birthing now, but it’s painful to be born again”.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” is written on the Statue of Liberty. At the time in the late 19th century, it was seen as a positive sign of welcome. Since the birth of film in America, this message was reinforced via funnily enough westerns that showed settlers conquering a ‘savage’ land, making it their own.

In the late 1940’s, the mood changed, and cinematically, America saw a challenge to the idea of the “American Dream” through Hollywood crime dramas, “film noir” in other words. Suddenly, America was no longer the land of milk and honey, the streets were mean, not paved with gold. In the wake of 9/11, (the attacks on the World Trade Centre), the Iraq war, the 2008 financial melt down a number of film directors from the start of this century

Alexander Payne, Jason Reitman, Tom McCarthy, the actor-directors George Clooney and Robert Redford, or the couple Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris took a different approach.”Endowed” for them, is all about the narrative from the point of view of ordinary people and how they responded to events. Geo-politics and how it affects the USA, has meant a need to re-look at what the “American Dream” really means. The American Dream, for the poor huddled masses, meant immigrants could remake themselves, become successful or if not them, then their children”.

A number of film directors, such as Michael Moore, Sophia Coppola, have had box office successes with films that are either overtly political or are more subtle in their depictions of people trying to reconnect, dispel their ennui. Independent film, has, unlike more mainstream fare, been able to explore the complexity of how people relate/don’t relate to each other. The films of say Hal Hartley, such as “Simple Men” are a very good example of this; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Hartley.

The point that it was trying to make, as it relates to the cultural side of the ongoing “War against Terror”, is that only certain narratives are allowed to be portrayed. “What’s clear is that cinema’s response to terrorism is more fraught an issue than ever. On the one hand, Western cinema is a new front in the “war on terror”. While on the other, jihadism in 2015 is itself appropriating the language of Western popular culture with its murderous viral videos, designed to both intimidate and recruit, and showing a terrible appreciation of the language of Western action films and video games.

When Abu Sumayyah al-Britani, a teenager from a nice part of Cardiff, joined Isis last June, he said: “Jihad is better than Call of Duty.”Amid all this, is it not time for the film industry to start thinking seriously about its responsibilities? It is interesting to note the creative features that shape this generation of independent filmmakers as a coherent group that emerged in the early years of the twenty- first century. To this end, the key aspects of the narrative, social and cultural imagination of the American Dream in the twenty-first century, as outlined in the 2011 study carried out the research team led by Hanson and White, are read as the main points of reference.

The eight key aspects reflected by the Indiewood generation encompass the projection of a domestic problems onto a national stage in crisis; a hopeful optimism with respect to the resolution of conflicts; the epic portrayal of ordinary people; the inspiration of cinematic archetypes that first emerged in the New Deal era; the description or critique of civil rights under threat; political interference in the civil liberties of citizens; the use of narrative strategies typical of the American Dream story, including the journey, the frontier and the recovery of home; and finally, the importance of a generational consciousness in relation to both past and future.

I think that it could be safely argued that “Indiewood”, is a necessary cultural check and balance for the political body, in that films tend to represent a society’s anxieties, pains, pleasures, questions. For example, the “Generation X” (directors born between 1960 and 1980) era of films and directors, often show the paradox of people in relationships that are fragile and brittle, yet they still long to connect with someone, but marriage and rarely plays a part in that. Another recurring feature in the work of the Indiewood filmmakers is their concern regarding the kind of cultural, economic and social legacy to be handed down to later generations.

Generational consciousness and the idea of inheritance are motifs in crisis narratives; they also figure in the work of film directors from the 1930s and 1940s who articulated their social concern in the movies they made It was in the early 1980s, in an economic climate shaped by neoliberalism, that saw a generation fated to fall short of their parents in terms of material prosperity.

Difficulty in saving money or finding a good job are likewise signs of the times for a generation marked by domestic instability, a high divorce rate and an increasing number of so-called ‘latchkey’ children. In his account of twenty-first century independent cinema, Ortner holds that, as a result of the situation outlined above, Generation X people “they express themselves–in their writings, their music and their films–as angry and frustrated, damaged and depressed, or, as a defence against all that, ironically removed from, and with a dark sense of humour” (Ortner, 2013: 21).

I suspect that “Indiewood”, are not so much against the “American Dream” and more trying to point out that the dream has become ever elusive for some, and a nightmare for others. The emotional displacement has become a defence mechanism for people who are unsure how to get their piece of “the dream”, as the usual methods used by previous generations is not working.

So, in effect what we are left with, when the wish to be “cool”, to be “ironic” to be at a distance, is set aside? Well, it’s a whole filmic genre that questions the socially conservative notion of “mom and apple pie”. This generation of film makers and directors are asking the question of “how did we get here?”, “is here where I want to be?”

‘Twas the two days before Christmas!!!
Last two days have been a mixture of manic activity and moments of relaxation but mainly the former.
For the first time in nearly 30 years, I put up Christmas decorations (December 23rd), lit tea-light lanterns. Before this year, for various reasons I was never in a good place, head-wise to do so.
This has been such a year of profound change, of life, of sadness, of death, of joy. Friendships broken, other ones made. “What a wondrous piece of work is man”, as Shakespeare put it.
Went to the Southbank today, part of my annual ritual. It had stopped raining which I was grateful for, the sun made a brave attempt to remind us of its duties, despite the mockery of the harsh wind.
I’ve always found the walk along the river to be stimulating for contemplative rumination…the change of light matches the change of atmosphere.
Inside Cafe Nero, all is convivial, a multitude of voices from Europe and beyond, this is the sort of place that both Britain First and UKIP would hate. As I sip on a mocha, I’m helping a friend with their MA plan that I’ll email them later, past Christmas, as they have got enough on their plate at the moment. I want them to enjoy this part of the season, not worry about their college work.

As I write, on my headphones I’m listening to R4’s “9 Lessons and Carols”. I always try to catch it, though for me it’s an aesthetic experience, not a religious one. It brings home the attempts by the church/religion to understand beyond this world. The R4 “9 Lessons and Carols”, can and are an unexpected source of comfort…

The Way Home: On Christmas Eve, the city takes on a completely different character. The majority of the shops are shut by mid-late afternoon. Those that hath no gift for a loved one by this late stage, I say to them with all sincerity man/woman thou art truly lost. The tempo of the city changes, like a giant in his slumbers, turning at his ease.

As I wait for the bus, near The St Martin-in-the-Fields church, snatches of conversation. A young man, a woman with a child in-between them walk past. “That was a very good sermon, I thought”, he says “very inclusive”. She agrees. A few minutes later, two women and a young girl walk past softly singing a Christmas carol, not caring who hears. On the bus, the small conversations are about December 25th…and as each person departs the talk falls away like leaves….